A diary of my experiences in Eve Online, an online game of Internet Spaceships, pew-pew, trading, thieving, back-stabbing, hunting and exploration

Monday, December 9, 2013

How I Made My First Billion ISK in Eve Online

Bwahahaha!

There are many "first billion" stories in Eve; this is mine.

August 8th 2013 was my first day in Eve and I hit my first "wallet balance" billion ISK (not counting assets) about four months later. My first two months were spent doing solo play: missions, manufacturing, trade and the other stuff you can read in early blog postings. This made some money, but nothing serious. I also got a 250M ISK kick-start by sharing a plex the friend who got me to play Eve.

The serious money started when I joined Aideron Robotics and started earning Faction Warfare loyalty points. We were in Tier 3 at the time, so the LP flowed thick and fast. Over the next two months I earned about 350K LP by running plexes. I was told it was best not to spend it until we had dropped to Tier 1, which everyone was sure was coming soon, especially as TEST joined FW.

The reason behind this thinking is simply supply and demand. When the LP is flowing like wine, most people spend it right away, buying and reselling items from the LP store, and their prices drop. When we hit Tier 1 and people are earning a lot less LP, they buy and resell less LP store items and their prices go up again. I watched the datacore market and decided (right or wrong) that Electronic Engineering and Gallentean Starship were the most valuable. When the price of both went above 150K I started cashing in LP, buying thousands of these datacores.

I shipped them to Jita, where the highest prices are found, using Push Industries,and sold them through an alt. I had to do this because my main character cannot go to Jita; it's in Caldari space. My alt put the datacores up on sell orders, asking nearly 200K per Gallentean Starship...and got it! I sent the money back to my main character and, hey presto, billionaire!

Next time the Gallente rise to Tier 3 or even Tier 4 I'll be plexing even more and aiming for even more LP!

In regular Eve-play news, I helped plex Ladistier up to 22% contested, but sadly this morning it was back down to 1%: we don't have consistent timezone coverage to hold our gains. I got on two Thrasher kills of the same pilot that were rather fun. After that I ran three data sites (16M ISK) and went belt ratting. Unfortunately I shot at a wreck that wasn't mine, just for kicks and was surprised to lose a big chunk of security standings. I'm only -1.6, a carebear by many standards, but it's surprisingly easy to push this number down. Remember that if it gets below -5 you can be attacked anywhere, making trips to high-sec more difficult than they need to be. I also built several Tristans that match with our corporate fit, which saves money versus buying them from our kind industrialist :)